


Becoming

by roraruu



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood and Gore, Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sex, Not Romance, Prequel, Swearing, Violence, tfw ur the only vamp in a massive mansion and take a fucking asshole under your wing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24723145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roraruu/pseuds/roraruu
Summary: Lukas, a mature vampire, takes the newly-changed Python under his wing to learn about their kind. Growing pains and conflicts of interest ensue, making both Python and Lukas question if it is harder to exist or become. (A prequel fic to Fair Game for Fate.)
Relationships: Lukas & Python (Fire Emblem)
Kudos: 5





	Becoming

**Author's Note:**

> this piece was originally included in the beginning of the pdf for fair game for fate. this was actually supposed to be much longer, detailing how python and forsyth got separated, python's change into a vamp and then pick up where this fic begins but i ran outta steam. all y'all gotta know is that python got around and some witch that he slept with got pissed and cursed him upon death to hunger for more than coochie.  
> originally, i had an idea for a prequel of this prequel, which entailed how lukas decided to become a more refined being and begin keeping notes and thoughts of a vampire and his relationships with the characters mentioned (bonus points to anyone to recognizes them and more to whoever understands what/who the tarot symbolize!). i don't have the energy to write it rn but maybe someday, as i think he'd be an interesting character to breakdown such a complex moral attitude on. also he'd be a really hot vampire don't at me.  
> anyways, if u haven't read fair game for fate and want to see more of python being an asshole vampire, check it out! there's a complete pdf on my wip blog (roraruu.tumblr.com/pdfs) of the pieces or you can read it here!  
> stay safe out there everyone,  
> as always, thanks for reading n everything y'all do ♥️♥️♥️

Python vividly remembers meeting Lukas. It’s along the edge of the borderlands at night after he’s taken a meal. His senses are sharp, pulling him towards the scent of spilt blood. Funny, the smell of a human enticing him more than a pint of ale has in ages. He flies through the trees, chasing after the injured idiot who didn’t patch himself up.

Dumbass. That’s the first thing they tell you in the army: patch your wounds and keep the blood inside of you. It attracts more than eyes and the enemy.

Unfortunately for the little lost soldier, Python overpowers him. The soldier is no threat at all, not even a challenge. The vampire brings him down, cruelly breaking his legs so he can’t get away. As he primes for his meal, Python sees someone else from the corner of his eye.

They stand at the edge of the forest, almost looming like they’re shocked at such a sight. Fine for him, he can make room for another meal. Good food is scarce in these parts of Zofia. It’s a wasteland, like the rest of it. He watches for a moment as the stranger comes closer, closing the distance between the two of them. The stranger stands much shorter than Python but there’s something about him that commands respect. Is it intimidation, or perhaps a certain hierarchy of nobility and common that spreads even beyond life and death. Come to think of it, this stranger’s dressed in a cape that mimics Zofian aristocracy threaded with gold and red. 

Python drops the arm of the man he’s draining. He cries out piteously and Python snaps his neck with the heel of his boot. He looks to the stranger cautiously. Blood trickles along his lip, his tongue slithering out to lick it away; his bares his teeth in the moonlight as in some animalistic warning.

“You would not want to do that with me. I assure you that it won’t be as simple.” He says in a too-soothing voice. 

“Sure about that?” 

“You’re a vampire like me.” He says. “And have been causing me trouble for sometime now.”

Python frowns a little. “Didn’t realize the area was reserved. Sorry.”

“No apology required.” 

Python watches as the other vampire steps closer to him. He’s well kept, almost human looking. His shirt is freshly pressed and his collar his free of stains. He is ghastly pale, but unlike Python, he wears it as a sign of nobility, of class. But the thing that sets apart Lukas is not only that he is clean and kept, his eyes are red, almost auburn like the blood moons that come every few centuries. 

“It’s rare to find those of our kind who are so... amenable. Care for a walk?” He glances to the body

behind Python. He weighs the costs in his mind. He could die or he trapped or simply be tricked. But something about this vamp is different…

And what’s the worst could happen? He’s already dead and he’s a vamp, nothing could make this worse.

“Sure.” Python says cautiously, lifting the corpse up and taking in the last of the blood in his veins. 

“There is a manor beyond the trees. Mine to be exact. Anyways, I have a place you can bury him.” The vampire says. “Follow me.”

Python watches as the vampire lifts his feet and becomes nothing more than a streak of red. Throwing the body over his shoulder, as to not leave a mark of blood and death along the borderlands. Such a sight will only make more reasons to fight and stifle hunting. 

“You seem somewhat wild and wear your meal.” The vampire says when they stop. They are in the shadow of a large manor, overlooking the bluffs and sharp seaside of the Zofian coast.

“He was a fighter.” Python says, his gaze flickering to the lapping waves. Surely they get violent when the tide comes in and goes out. 

“You could have snapped his neck sooner.” He says. “Tell me, how long have you been a vampire?”

Invasive. Python strikes. “A couple of days.” He says. “You?”

“I figured as much.” He laughs, almost like velvet. “I’ve been like this for close to fifty years. I know quite a bit.”

He flicks his head to a rose bush, thick and wildly growing everywhere. The roses are full and bright, different than any others he’d seen. Python pulls up the earth around the roots and buries the body there.

“You playin’ nice for a reason?” Python asks. It makes Lukas’s brow raise.

“‘Playing nice’?”

“There’s a reason why you’re being so amenable.” Python says. “I’d prefer to be blunt. Are we gonna fight or not?”

The vampire half smirks. “You’ve quite the sense of humour.” He says. “But I don’t intend to fight. My motives are as simple.”

“What are they then?”

“To know your name. And why you’re here."

“I was caught around the borderlands. When I was human I was fightin’ for the army.” He says. 

“I see.”

“That enough?”

The vampire draws a little closer, reaching out to touch the rose bushes. His ghastly fingers graze the plump petals. The bodies must make them so beautiful. “A proper greeting usually entails a name. Mine is Lukas, and yours?” He holds out his hand to shake.

“Python,” He admits at last. His fingers graze his, shaking his hand gingerly.

“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you Python.” He says. “Would you consider a proposition?” 

“What type?”

“I want to know if you intend to stay near.” Lukas’s eyes flicker to his. “My manor is not... human, per se. It could be a place of refuge and respite.”

“Hm. That’s an awful gracious offer.”

Lukas looks at him expectantly.

“But graciousness is a cover for something. What’s your game.”

“Only one is to keep a fellow vampire alive.” He eyes Python. “You lack expertise and basic knowledge of our kind. That will get you killed.”

“Who’s to say I’m sold on this life?”

“You seemed to have enjoyed it before.” Lukas says with a narrow gaze. 

Python frowns before flicking his head towards the manor. “Let me see the digs?”

“Of course.” Lukas says, walking up towards the manor.

It’s not covered top to bottom with gossamer or dust. It’s… clean and kept and large. It sprawls, the rooms leading into each other, stories moving up almost as tall as the pines overhead. He finds himself in a study that overlooks the crashing shores of Valentia’s seas. Through the cracks of the blinds and the forgiving shadows, Python watches as waves crash against the bluffs, pulling back gently and then crashing violently again. In the darkness of the manor, the curtains only pulled back for the night, he feels comfort for the first time in ages. In some strange way—perhaps the burns that scar his skin—he does not miss it, not one bit. 

Still, it is strange to look out from the windows of a home, a mortal place. And while the lands around Lukas’s home are deserted and dead, something tells Python that people should still be here. That they should be tending to the overgrown lands and pines that shroud the manor.

A vampire does not belong in the world of the living. 

But Lukas looks at him with a narrow gaze, his eyes studying Python like he is the enemy. He turns to a large bookcase behind them as Python leans against an ornate chair that it probably worth more than everything on him. 

“Becoming is harder than existing.” Lukas tells him as his eyes settle on a book.

“What philosophy are you spoutin’ now?” Python asks. 

“It is harder to become someone than just to exist. To exist is to be passive, an onlooker. But to become someone or something is to develop and grow.” He says. “I have pondered that for many, many years.”

“I was never a fan of writing.” Python slams himself down in the chair. 

Lukas raises a brow annoyedly. “Do you not agree though? Especially with our kind?” He turns his head from the case.

“Our kind?”

“Vampires. Do you not find it hard to take lives?” He asks.

Images flash to Python’s mind. Being left and marked for dead and drinking the _actual_ dead around him dry. His first kill of an old deer in the forest, it’s fleshy neck crumpling in Python’s hand and the wince as he bit into its neck. The soldier crying out for Mila just moments ago.

A shiver runs down his back. He shakes his head. “No.” 

Lukas’s brow furrows. “Perhaps not now, but someday you may have a realization.” He says, looking to his book. “Regardless, it is something I have wrestled with for as long as I’ve been human.”

“Weak.”

Lukas’s brow raises. “For?”

“For doubting yourself.” He says, getting up. “If you are truly like me, then what have you to fear? Holy relics? Mila-lovers? Sunlight? You can avoid them all.” Python scoffs a little, glancing around the rich-looking room and then turning his gaze back to Lukas. “After all, if you’ve been like this for fifty years, you know how to hide or fight damn well.”

Lukas stays quiet.

“Right?”

“You are not the first... housemate I have had.” Lukas discloses. “To keep it light, I know of many ways we could die.”

Python frowns. So he’s a guinea pig, some test experiment. 

“I began recording methods I suppose. Things we are weak to, things that can kill us. For my own amusement.”

“You’ve got one fucked up sense of fun.” 

Lukas traces the desk, the book in his hand turning from an old hardcover book to a diary. The notes. “I could steal innocents and demand good for their heads.” He says, all too serious. The smirk on his lips wavers between playful and deadly. “But I find this a more morbid and fun way to while away the years."

“How long does that go back?” Python asks, flicking his head towards the diary. 

“As long as I’ve been like this.” Lukas says, closing the book.

“Don’t you think that’s dangerous?” Python asks, leaning against the desk. “What happens if a Mila-lover sneaks in here and snags your little diary?”

“Then I suppose we pray that they cannot read my script.” Lukas smirks.

“You’re a weird one.”

“Regardless Python, you may realize one day that we are not all so... footloose and fancy free.” He says. “We vampires break a cycle and for that, we must transform.”

“Like into a bat or some shit?”

Lukas laughs like velvet again. He shakes his head as he turns his attention to Python. “So? What say you?” He asks. “Will you become something with me or simply exist as a monster?”

Lukas holds his hand out again. He looks expectantly at Python. His gaze flickers from Lukas’s red eyes to his outstretched hand.

“That’s what we are aren’t we?” 

“I like to think I am not so barbaric as the Terrors that stalk the lands.” He says. “On occasion, I lay them to rest if they bother those nearby.”

Python stands up, arms crossed over his chest. “So you’re a goody two shoes.”

“Call me what you want.” The vampire says with a smile. 

Python weighs the possibilities out before him. The manor is massive and a better place to hide than in caves or in graveyards until the moon is out again. He frowns, looks at Lukas’s hand. 

“I think a monster suits me better.” He says, then takes Lukas’s hand. “But this manor is nice. It’d be  cool to rest somewhere other than under a rock.”

Lukas smiles, his fangs flashing as he rests his hand over Python’s.   
  


* * *

Lukas wishes not to be a monster, while Python welcomes it. Such becomes their relationship, two railing against each other. 

Lukas suggests a half hour return policy at night; when the sun is about to rise, they are to leave their games and return to the manor and hide behind the thick curtains until nightfall.

Python busts down the door, outrunning the sunlight barely and burning his hands in the process.

Lukas records experiments on himself. Tests of withstanding silver, holy water and garlic. 

Python laughs when the holy water makes him cry out.

Lukas lures people to the manor to feed. Such a sight instills a stupid amount of comfort in them. He ends them quickly, allows their final sight to be the sight of the ever-blooming roses in the garden. 

Python brings girls back to fuck and then feed. He doesn’t clean the sheets. He dumps a corpse in the ocean.

But the one thing that kills Lukas’s patience is his disconcert for people. “Do you not care about them?” He asks Python.

The other vampire lounges over a sofa, searching for rest and unused to it. “Not particularly.” He says. “I’ve above them. Why should the wolf care about the rabbits?”

“Because without the rabbits, he will starve.” Lukas warns. It is something he does not heed, the rift between the two growing further: Lukas, as sympathetic saviour to the dying, and Python some monster that cruelly laughs as they die.   
  


* * *

“You should stop.” 

Lukas’s voice hits the ocean waves, bouncing across the water. Python looks back at him, over the rocky edges of the bluffs. He knows how it looks, leaning over the edge of the bluffs, staring down at the murderous waves. Any normal person wouldn’t dare come this close to the jagged cliffs that lead to the sea.

“Relax, I’m already dead right?” Python calls over his shoulder. The salty wind whips at his face, pulling  his cloak in all directions.

“That you are but—“

“Listen Luke ol’ boy, I just wanted to test the ends of this body.” He says. “And if a fall from some hundred feet dents it, so what, right?”

Lukas simply stares at him. “You’re a pigheaded one, aren’t you?”

“Some called me that before.” He smirks. “And then worse.”

“Then learn your lesson.” Lukas says, stepping backwards. His arms fold behind his back. He stares on with a narrowed, nuanced gaze. 

With his blessing, Python peers over the edge of the bluffs, down into the rocky tidal pools that swell with water. He’s high up, probably a good hundred feet, maybe more. He casts off Forsyth’s cloak, holding it out to Lukas. “Hold it real quick?”

The nobleman takes it from Python as the new vampire stretches out his arms, like a snow angel and free falls into the whirlpools. He stares into the inevitable bluffs, the jagged rocks that would shatter a mortal’s bones, rip apart their skin and smash their organs. His body meets the bluffs, cracking loudly like shattering rocks and falls still. He stares up at the night sky, a black plasma oozing from his neck.

A shock of pain rings through his body. So he does have limits. Of upwards of a thousand feet. Good to know.

Something else runs through his body, paralyzing him. He can’t move his hands, legs or any part of his body for that matter. He stares up at the edge of the bluffs and sees the vibrant red of Lukas’s hair. 

Weakly, he calls out for Lukas. His voice is far from him. 

“I _tried_ to reason with you.”

“What’s going on?” Python croaks. 

Luckily, Lukas can hear him. “You’re caught in Mila’s blood and tears. You can’t cross or move.” He calls.

“What?”

“Our kind cannot cross waterways at all. I tried to tell you but—“

“Yeah yeah I’m pigheaded. How do I get out?”

Lukas walks back and forth. “Wait here.” He says. “I’ll be back before dawn.”

“ _Dawn?!_ ” He calls. “C’mon Luke, don’t hold—“

He’s gone before Python can finish. The archer frowns, that much he can move. Water debilitates him, makes it impossible to move even a finger. He wonders how Lukas found out about this. He wonders if Lukas had been all alone before him or just he had someone to guide him through the change, someone by his side. 

By his side. Gods. He wonders how Forsyth is handling his absence. They marked him as dead in the records book and he laid the cloak on him.

Lukas better not lose that stupid piece of cloth. 

* * *

It takes some time, but Lukas brings around a pegasus knight. Not anyone Python’s seen around before. Thank god, if it was Penelope or whatever her name was—the knight that follow Forsyth around like a lost puppy—he’d been in deep shit. This one’s pretty, with long robes and a lantern.

“My friend is just down there. I fear for my life going down to the bluffs—“

“Yes sir, please leave it to me.” She says, something soft and forced in her voice. 

Python lets out a pitiful call of help up, to really let the panic sink in. The knight leaps upon her steed, and dives down like a bird to Python. Underneath a blue and white helmet, Python can see long, ginger hair in a braid. Her scent clashes against the salty air.

It’s sweet. He grows thirsty. 

“Goodness, you look practically dead! Let’s get you back up to the surface, yes?” She says. There is no safe place to land on the bluffs.

“I can’t move.” He winces. Not a total lie.

The knight’s face falls in the light. With renewed determination, she leaps off her steed, landing gracefully against the smooth edge of one of the whirlpools. The knight catches her breath, her wine-like scent drifting closer to Python. His throat aches, running dry. 

Her hand curls around the underside of his arm, clenching tight as she hauls him up and over her shoulder. The water dribbles off of him, the paralysis ending. He can move at last. He can see Lukas staring down at him with that jarring gaze, probably warning him not to taste.

The pegasus snorts angrily. It pulls away from it’s master. The knight tugs the lead.

“Can you move now?” She asks softly. 

“Little bit,” He tries out his charm and she easily falls under it, her eyes growing glassy and lidded. Her breath hitches, body freezing a little. “Let’s get on your horse with wings.”

“Yes...” She breathes, calling for her steed. A whinny fills the air amidst crashing waves. Quickly, they fly back up to the top of the bluffs, where Lukas waits. He helps himself off of the pegasus. 

“Thanks, better now.” Python says, releasing his grip on her. 

The knight looks between the two. The charm breaks, the knight flickering back to noble duty. “Are you certain? I know a cleric who could help—“

“Nah, I’m all good sweetheart.” Python says. Lukas notices the rising animosity in his voice. 

“Python...” Lukas warns. He’s trying to use his charm on him. Python feels a pull, lulling him away from the girl. It’s not enough, he’s too gentle with him. But her scent, sweet and bitter like wine, is too intoxicating for him to stop.

“Python, stop.” Lukas orders. It falls on deaf ears.

With a wind-like sprint, Python runs after the knight. In a panic, the pegasus bucks it’s rider off, and she lets out a shriek. Throwing her against the ground, her scent grows stronger as her skin breaks and her blood spills across Mila’s earth. It smells divine and Python dashes towards the crawling and dazed knight.

“ _Python don’t!_ ” Lukas yells to no avail. 

Python rips off her helmet and seizes her by the braid. She lets out a painful cry as he sinks his teeth into the knight’s neck, drinking her dry. The lust settles after a moment, when her wine blood slips down his throat and settles in his stomach. He feels a rush of warmth to his cheeks, a gentle brush of life again; he feels human, just for a second, the memories and life of hers becoming his for a brief second. The feeling fades as he drops her limp body to the ground. 

Lukas is over him, looming with a furious look in his eyes. “I told you to stop.”

“She smelt good.” Python says in his defense.

“ _Really?_ ” He says. “That’s all you’re going to say is that she smelt good?”

“Was there anything else to her?”

“She saved your life. She was a soldier.”

“You’re just mad because you wanted her as a treat, huh?” Python says, staring at the knight’s pale face. 

Lukas frowns, a terrifying thing. He holds out the cloak. “No.”

“Listen, she would’ve died anyways. She was human right?” Python argues lamely; Lukas simply shakes his head, grumbling something under his breath. “What do I do with the body?”

“Bury in her the rose garden.” Lukas says tiredly, with a wave of his hand. 

“Is that how they look so nice?”

Lukas does not answer him, instead turning away and disappearing in the blink of an eye.

* * *

More rules. Respect the rose garden. It is a memorial to all the dead by Lukas’s hands: a reminder of what his thirst does to others.

Python plucks one of them and pulls away all the petals for fun.

No loud noises past sundown.

Python terrifies his victims only to hear their shrieks and laugh in their faces.

No more girls, especially not noble women or knights.

Fine. Python picks up a fucking priestess.

No more testing his body or the limits it has.

Python nearly saws a limb off just to see if it would grow back.

“Don’t you tire of being like… _this?!_ ” Lukas asks him tiredly as he flicks through a collection of Tarot cards. Divination makes Lukas sick to his stomach. The cards were in the possessions of the priestess, and she has no need for the future while she rests six feet under.

Python flicks cards into an overturned helmet. Childish and sacrilegious for such divine things. Lukas only watches with a narrowed gaze. “How so? I’m being, like you said you wanted to do.” 

“ _Becoming_ ,” Lukas reiterates. “I wanted to become a vampire and becoming a humane one. Not be a vamp.”

Python laughs bitterly. “Sorry Lukas, but take a look in the mirror. You are one.” He laughs, then adding. “If you can even see yourself.” He throws more cards, the deck unfolding into the helmet save for three that land on the cover of Lukas’s diary: the Fool, the Hermit and the Star. He flicks the divine cards away and Lukas sweeps up his diary.

* * *

There are moments of respite, when Python isn’t so obnoxious. Usually, it’s in the daylight when neither of them can leave and they must tolerate each other or face isolation. But both, not spoken aloud, fear isolation with such a fury that it makes them both ache. To avoid it, they’ll hang in the same room, curtains tightly shut from the outside world. Just few metres apart from each other—Lukas at his desk, sifting through ages-old papers and books, and Python lounging uncouthly on the antique sofa that is older than the both of them combined. 

At first, Lukas offered his library to him, but he showed no interest. The options waned from games of chess that Python lost interest in or just didn’t care for. But the one thing that keeps him from feigning sleep is gossip. 

Lukas finds it useless but if it keeps Python from behaving like a child. In the end it wins. Whenever Python comes back and slams into the antique sofa, Lukas knows what it means. He’s bored and needs chatter.

Over the years they’ve exhausted much idle conversation; the weather, the state of the continent, women in town, hiding, the bluffs, their kind. They both beat around the bush on one thing: themselves. Such a thing is sacred, personal. It was left behind after they were bitten and cursed to become vampires, shedding mortal skin and obligations of care, of humanity.

When they had simply existed, now of which they become.

Lukas has discussed his past life with his past housemates; an elder lady of refined birth with no taste for the flesh, a young boy who hungered for vengeance and paid dearly for it, and a simple village girl, who had come to his door looking for shelter from a terrible storm. If he shuts his eyes, he can remember her clearly, precisely in the solace of his mind.

But Python is not the elder lady, young boy or the village girl. All Lukas knows about him is from the cloak about his shoulders, that of a Zofian lieutenant’s. And given the way Python behaves like a feral beast, Lukas highly doubts he was the one to receive that honour. It must belong to someone close, someone special. 

He lazily sifts through his journal, looking over old notes as Python mills about, eyeing his study destructively. Everything is a toy to him, a means to play.

“You know, I had an elder brother.” Lukas says. It’s more of a blurt out into the air, words into the abyss of day.

The other vampire looks up quickly, brow raising and narrowing on him. The eyes of a hunter, taking in everything about Lukas that could be used against him. He gives a small snort of breath. “Spilling the beans on yourself?”

“How long have you been here for?” Lukas asks snappily, his eyes moving up from the book. 

Python shuts up. He forces himself to sit up properly, eyeing Lukas. “A brother?”

“By only half, bless Mila.” 

“Where is he now?”

Silence answers his question. Python nods, glancing about the room. His eyes look for something to focus on, instead of Lukas. The elder pushes further. “Did you have any family?”

“No.” The answer is immediate. He doesn’t look at Lukas.

The lord nods now, shutting his book and lifting his calculating gaze from the endless papers. “I see. Mine is not a happy tale either.” He admits.

“Is anyone’s?”

Lukas smiles mirthlessly. “I suppose not.” He says. “May I? The company of another vampire is a luxury that is hard to come by.”

Python nods, leaning back into the armchair. Lukas rises from his seat and takes a few measured steps about the room. “My brother and I shared a same father, but were born by mothers. As the first wife’s son, and of higher birth, he would inherit my Father’s estate and lands. I would gain nothing. Yet still he thought of me as a rival.” Lukas muses. He stares at the dark curtains that let no sunlight in. Instinctively, he clutches the edge of his coat. Strange, a human would wear it to fight off the mortal chill of death and the weather, but with the Crest of Zofia on the back, it seems as though Lukas wears it to prove a point. 

But then Python remembers his own cloak, Forsyth’s. A point to never forget his grieving friend. 

“Perhaps it is because his Mother died and mine lived...” he ponders aloud. “In any case, before I could be shipped off to the castle to be some knight in service, he found a way to the undead.”

Python’s brow raises.

“He paid a vampire in blood. Mine.” He says, that haunting smile returning to his face. “My turning was by bite.”

“The good ol’ fashioned way.” Python cracks, not meaning it to be a joke. 

He tenses when Lukas laughs. “Yes. The popularized one.” He says. “I have few texts that cover the other ways. Scarce few seem to write on us.”

“And you were—“

“Curse I suppose is the way.” He says. “Some Rigelian witch.”   


“Interesting,” Lukas murmurs, turning to face him. He stares at Python, measuring him up at last.

“Never met a cursed one?”

“I’ve met one from a bad burial. The other were bitten.” 

“I guess I’m a different breed then.”

“That you are.” Lukas says. 

“Back to your brother...”

“Interested?”

“I like my gossip.” Python says. 

“Well in the end I inherited everything. After he faced an untimely death.” 

Lukas has to hide a smirk when Python’s brow furrows and his eyes grow wide. “Was it...” his voice drops off a little.

“Very few at the manor knew of my supposed death, even less of my brother’s true colours.” Lukas muses, his lips turning up at the edges. “It was a simple affair. Though the look on his face when I came back here alive... it was worth all the pain he had given me before.” 

Lukas’s eyes flock outside. His slowly rises up, pulling back the curtain. The golden sunset fades through the pines and along the bluffs. “The night is upon us.” He says. “Remember the rules?”

Python pulls himself up nodding quickly. “Yeah, be home half an hour before golden hour. No maidens or holy ones.” He drones back as Lukas returns to his desk. 

“Very good. Stay out of trouble.” He advises, and within a flash, Python is gone from the study, leaving Lukas alone to attend to his own business.

* * *

Python manages to sate his thirst for blood and hunger for fun that night. He uses his charms on some buxom woman from town and manages to invite her out for the following night. The taste of blood lingers on his lips as the trees fly past him, barely out running the sun. He slips through the scullery door, slamming it behind him as the sun lingers towards the manor. Lukas won’t be pleased, but Python won’t bug him. That much, at least.

He wanders through the manor, past sculptures and busts, taking in all the sights he’d ignored for so many years. Python stops the hallway, where the curtains are tightly drawn and the rose bushes guard the outside door like a thick wall of magic. Above, on the landing to the second floor, are several portraiture of what he can only guess is Lukas’s family.

There are two medium-sized paintings of a mothers and babes. The child on the left is ginger, perhaps a little older than four, and sits on the knee of a regal looking woman in a long gown. The child on the right—more like a babe, no older than a year—is in the arms of much-younger looking woman with long red hair. 

Lukas. 

Python picks his cherub-like face from the two. Sick, passing by portraits of dead mothers and a brother who hated him. In the middle is a portrait of three adult men; the eldest seated in the middle, then Lukas’s brother on the left, and finally, Lukas on the right. The composition is of succession, making Python sick to his stomach.

How many times had he walked past these portraits in the years he’d lived with Lukas? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of times and he hadn’t even glanced up. Python frowns to himself, and hears something in his head telling him to talk about his fucked up family. They’re in the past, right; as is Lukas’s. 

Being with the lord isn’t so bad. There’s somewhere to go when it’s light out, someone to talk to who understands what it’s like. And besides, the manor is pretty nice when Lukas isn’t so cold or uptight. 

Python climbs the staircase at a human’s pace, not bolting up with vampiric speed. He turns the corner, moves down the hall past paintings of pastoral landscapes and knights and into the study.

It’s empty. No Lukas at all. The desk is in clean order his book cleared back into a locked drawer, the never-ending stack of papers hidden. The curtains are still open though, letting some sun in. Python pulls them shut swiftly.

“Lukas? I’m back.” Python calls out, glancing around as if he’s hiding.

He hears a crash somewhere in the manor. He tenses, then moves quickly through the second floor, checking the library, the second study, the sewing room and extra bedroom. There’s another crash, down below and Python flies as fast as he can towards it.

Down, scrambling down the first floor is a young woman, a hunter. In her trembling hands is a sword, one that makes him recoil a bit. A relic of Mila, blessed with her tears. It glitters with a soft blue hue, blessed for certain and effective against Terrors and the undead.

“ _St-Stay back bloodsucker!_ ” She yells out, a curtain of black hair falling over her shoulder. Python smells something sweet, syrupy and then notices the blood that drips along her wrist and the black plasma that oozes off the sword. 

The same black plasma that flows through his, and other vampire’s veins instead of blood. 

Python flocks to her, knocking her back with such fury that she flies into the wall and knocks down valuables. She screams, calls for Mila to save her and scrambles for the sword. She cries out the Mother’s holy name over and over again, and only falls silent when Python throws her skull back into marble and shatters it. He drains her, not out of hunger, but out of vengeance.

Python flies as quickly as he can up the stairs, to the third floor which he had never bothered to explore before. Lukas had said it was old bedrooms and the like. He throws open the door to the last room on the left and stares expectantly inside.

There’s a balcony that leads outside. Sunlight spills through the half-opened curtains, the door to the balcony still open. The ceiling above is decadently painted with traditional Valentian art from ages-ago. A four-poster bed goes unused, along with a nearby desk, fireplace and bookcase of knights’ sagas.

And in the middle, on the expensive Rigelian carpet is Lukas. He stares blankly up at the painted ceiling. They’re dark, unmoving—almost fully black like a moonless sky. Python never seen them turn that shade before. Always a soft red, almost amber, the telltale look of a well-fed vamp. But he does not look well-fed now. Nor comfortable. Instead, his eyes stare up at the paintings of Mila and her angels, of the mage Zofia and the noble houses that surrounded his. The expensive Rigelian carpet is soaked with black plasma, squishing too loudly when Python steps closer to look at him.

Lukas’s head lies a little ways off from his body, the fiery red of his hair dipped in his own blood to become black. His head is torn clean off, one way to kill a vamp.

The diary. Python’s eyes widen as he searches Lukas’s body and the room. It’s not there, gone from his person. He usually keeps it close. He stares at Lukas for another moment before going back to the hunter’s body and finding it in a bag on her hip. His fingers curl against the leather cover, his nails making claw marks against it. For a brief second, he thinks about throwing it into flames or into the bluffs but he can’t bring himself to do that, not to years of Lukas’s work. It would be a spit in the face.

He returns to Lukas’s room, moving the plasma-stained carpet away and pulling up the floorboards. He buries the diary within the manor and replaces the carpet, praying that no one will find it. He starts a fire and burns the hunter’s body, the stench of her flesh overpowering her sweet blood. It is a scent that will stick with him for ages to come.

The day passes quickly for once, like some sick joke. Python sits with Lukas’s body, just beyond the reach of the sun’s rays. He listens to the clang of far-off church bells that signal dawn, noon and then dusk. As the sun fades into the bluffs, Python thinks about the manor’s fate. There’s no scions or anyone to inherit that he knows of, no one to take it. But it’s marked now. The dead hunter won’t return but the church or whatever Mila-loving group will send more in vengeance. This place is as good as done, bound to be looted by brigands, pirates, beggars. Perhaps even a place where Terrors will rise.

And while Python is cold-hearted, it does not mean he is without a heart. He wraps Lukas up in his handsome cloak and waits until nightfall to dig a hole for him. He plucks a handful of roses from the pretty little garden of the dead. He lays him to rest, burying Lukas in his beloved garden.

This place has nothing for him now. At least for the time being. When the dirt covers Lukas and the moon reaches it’s arch in the sky, Python turns away from the manor for a final time. He feels an ache in his chest as he glances back at the manor from the shadows of the forest. He tries to look away, to move on and leave this place behind like he had so easily done so many times before in his life; but Python’s feet stick down, unable to move for a moment. His eyes settle on the rose garden where Lukas is.

His friend lies there.

For a second, Python thinks of Forsyth. He wonders where he is, what he’s doing, if that girl that followed them around has fallen for him yet. His friend. He misses his friend. And now he has none, nothing. Just himself.

He prefers to be cold hearted, like his namesake, like a true vampire. But shreds of humanity exist within him, and he hates it. 

_Where to now?_ He thinks to himself, watching the manor for a moment longer. He could easily cross the border and go to Rigel. Or he could go back and try to blend in with the army before taking off with a lie. The sun begins to rise, softly along the east with the large building that is the manor. 

A loud crash carries along the bluffs as if the manor is burning and crashing into itself. _There’s sure to be fun in Zofia Harbour._ He thinks passively. For a second, he even thinks of leaving Valentia altogether but stops.

Python takes one last look at the manor, at Lukas’s and dozens of other victim’s resting places and the rose bushes before turning on his heel and disappearing into the shadows. As he walks into the unknown, he thinks about how Lukas was right: becoming something is harder than just existing.


End file.
